A public wedding now, after a year, would be a public notice of the . . .” So they decided it would be a reception, because Mrs. Habersham said how a reception could be held for a bridal couple at any time, even ten years later. So Drusilla was to ride into town, meet Father and be married as quick and quiet as possible, with just me and one other for witnesses to make it legal; none of the ladies themselves would even be present. Then they would come back home and we would have the reception.
So they began to arrive early the next morning, with baskets of food and tablecloths and silver like for a church supper. Mrs. Habersham brought a veil and a wreath and they all helped Drusilla to dress, only Aunt Louisa made Drusilla put on Father’s big riding cloak over the veil and wreath too, and Ringo brought the horses up, all curried and brushed, and I helped Drusilla on with Aunt Louisa and the others all watching from the porch.
But I didn’t know that Ringo was missing when we started, not even when I heard Aunt Louisa hollering for Denny while we rode down the drive. It was Louvinia that told about it, about how after we left the ladies set and decorated the table and spread the wedding breakfast and how they were all watching the gate and Aunt Louisa still hollering for Denny now and then when they saw Ringo and Denny come up the drive riding double on one of the mules at a gallop, with Denny’s eyes round as doorknobs and already hollering, “They kilt um! They kilt um!”
“Who?” Aunt Louisa hollered. “Where have you been?”
“To town!” Denny hollered. “Them two Burdens! They kilt um!”
“Who killed them?” Aunt Louisa hollered.
“Drusilla and Cousin John!” Denny hollered. Then Louvinia said how Aunt Louisa hollered sure enough.
“Do you mean to tell me that Drusilla and that man are not married yet?”
Because we didn’t have time. Maybe Drusilla and Father would have, but when we came into the square we saw the crowd of niggers kind of huddled beyond the hotel door with six or eight strange white men herding them, and then all of a sudden I saw the Jefferson men, the men that I knew, that Father knew, running across the square toward the hotel with each one holding his hip like a man runs with a pistol in his pocket.
And then I saw the men who were Father’s troop lined up before the hotel door, blocking it off. And then I was sliding off my horse too and watching Drusilla struggling with George Wyatt. But he didn’t have hold of her, he just had hold of the cloak, and then she was through the line of them and running toward the hotel with her wreath on one side of her head and the veil streaming behind. But George held me. He threw the cloak down and held me. “Let go,” I said. “Father.”
“Steady, now,” George said, holding me. “John’s just gone in to vote.”
“But there are two of them!” I said. “Let me go!”
“John’s got two shots in the derringer,” George said. “Steady, now.”
But they held me. And then we heard the three shots and we all turned and looked at the door. I don’t know how long it was. “The last two was that derringer,” George said. I don’t know how long it was. The old nigger that was Mrs. Holston’s porter, that was too old even to be free, stuck his head out once and said “Gret Gawd” and ducked back.
Then Drusilla came out, carrying the ballot box, the wreath on one side of her head and the veil twisted about her arm, and then Father came out behind her, brushing his new beaver hat on his sleeve. And then it was loud; I could hear them when they drew in their breath like when the Yankees used to hear it begin:
“Yaaaaa—” But Father raised his hand and they stopped. Then you couldn’t hear anything.
“We heard a pistol too,” George said. “Did they touch you?”
“No,” Father said. “I let them fire first. You all heard. You boys can swear to my derringer.”
“Yes,” George said. “We all heard.” Now Father looked at all of them, at all the faces in sight, slow.
“Does any man here want a word with me about this?” he said. But you could not hear anything, not even moving. The herd of niggers stood like they had when I first saw them, with the Northern white men herding them together. Father put his hat on and took the ballot box from Drusilla and helped her back onto her horse and handed the ballot box up to her.
Then he looked around again, at all of them. “This election will be held out at my home,” he said.
“I hereby appoint Drusilla Hawk voting commissioner until the votes are cast and counted. Does any man here object?” But he stopped them again with his hand before it had begun good. “Not now, boys,” he said. He turned to Drusilla. “Go home, I will go to the sheriff, and then I will follow you.”
“Like hell you will,” George Wyatt said. “Some of the boys will ride out with Drusilla. The rest of us will come with you.”
But Father would not let them. “Don’t you see we are working for peace through law and order?” he said. “I will make bond and then follow you. You do as I say.”
So we went on; we turned in the gates with Drusilla in front, the ballot box on her pommel — us and Father’s men and about a hundred more, and rode on up to the cabin where the buggies and surreys were standing, and Drusilla passed the ballot box to me and got down and took the box again and was walking toward the cabin when she stopped dead still.
I reckon she and I both remembered at the same time and I reckon that even the others, the men, knew all of a sudden that something was wrong. Because like Father said, I reckon women don’t ever surrender: not only victory, but not even defeat.
Because that’s how we were stopped when Aunt Louisa and the other ladies came out on the porch, and then Father shoved past me and jumped down beside Drusilla. But Aunt Louisa never even looked at him.
“So you are not married,” she said.
“I forgot,” Drusilla said.
“You forgot? You forgot?”
“I . . .” Drusilla said. “We . . .”
Now Aunt Louisa looked at us; she looked along the line of us sitting there in our saddles; she looked at me too just like she did at the others, like she had never seen me before. “And who are these, pray? Your wedding train of forgetters? Your groomsmen of murder and robbery?”
“They came to vote,” Drusilla said.
“To vote,” Aunt Louisa said. “Ah. To vote. Since you have forced your mother and brother to live under a roof of license and adultery you think you can also force them to live in a polling booth refuge from violence and bloodshed, do you?
Bring me that box.” But Drusilla didn’t move, standing there in her torn dress and the ruined veil and the twisted wreath hanging from her hair by a few pins. Aunt Louisa came down the steps; we didn’t know what she was going to do: we just sat there and watched her snatch the polling box from Drusilla and fling it across the yard. “Come into the house,” she said.
“No,” Drusilla said.
“Come into the house. I will send for a minister myself.”
“No,” Drusilla said. “This is an election. Don’t you understand? I am voting commissioner.”
“So you refuse?”
“I have to. I must.” She sounded like a little girl that has been caught playing in the mud. “John said that I—”
Then Aunt Louisa began to cry. She stood there in the black dress, without the knitting and for the first time that I ever saw it, without even the handkerchief, crying, until Mrs. Habersham came and led her back into the house. Then they voted. That didn’t take long either.
They set the box on the sawchunk where Louvinia washed, and Ringo got the pokeberry juice and an old piece of window shade, and they cut it into ballots.
“Let all who want the Honorable Cassius Q. Benbow to be Marshal of Jefferson write Yes on his ballot; opposed, No,” Father said.
“And I’ll do the writing and save some more time,” George Wyatt said. So he made a pack of the ballots and wrote them against his saddle and fast as he would write them the men would take them and drop them into the box and Drusilla would call their names out.
We could hear Aunt Louisa still crying inside the cabin and we could see the other ladies watching us through the window. It didn’t take long. “You needn’t bother to count them,” George said. “They all voted No.”
And that’s all. They rode back to town then, carrying the box, with Father and Drusilla in the torn wedding dress and the crooked wreath and veil standing beside the sawchunk, watching them. Only this time even Father could not have stopped them.
It came back high and thin and ragged and fierce, like when the Yankees used to hear it out of the smoke and the galloping:
“Yaaaaay, Drusilla!” they hollered. “Yaaaaaay, John Sartoris! Yaaaaaaay!”
AN ODOR OF VERBENA
1
IT WAS JUST after supper. I had just opened my Coke on the table beneath the lamp; I heard Professor Wilkins’
